Do you ever notice how every couple of years we seem to keep having the same conversations? A discussion bubbles up through the noise that feels eerily familiar – a sort of debate deja-vu. Didn’t we talk about this thing a while back? Last week I again bore witness to the meaning of Paul Verhoeven’s fascist satire Starship Troopers being misinterpreted by people whose media literacy is as deep French autoroute service area toilet pan.
The automotive community has its own dead horses it likes to drag out and re-flog from time to time. Cars are too fat. Cars all look the same. Cars are too complicated. Cars are all crossovers. Designers are all lazy (ouch). Right now you’re shouting your own bête noire at the screen. There’s always something wrong with the metal filling today’s showrooms, and if it were sorted out then we’d all be driving in a utopia of lollipops and free gas.
This week’s conversation we’re having for the umpteenth time is that new cars are too expensive. One section of the automotive hive minds thinks OEMs should be making hair shirts on wheels: simple tin cans with a minimum of features that sell for fifteen thousand dollars. Yes, I’m sure a heated steering wheel represents the very height of bourgeoisie decadence. Unless you happen to live in Frozen Bollock, Alaska at which point it becomes very much a necessity. The problem with this argument is normal car buyers don’t want hand cranked windows, single DIN stereos, plastic wheel trims and perma-fogged glazing. Cars are a visible manifestation of our personality; nobody wants to look stingy, even if they are.
The Car (Prices) Are Too Damn High!
A lot of context gets stripped out of these discussions about purchase price. Average transaction prices for new cars continue their inexorable march skywards, making new cars feel more expensive than they have ever been. The market has expanded and proliferated into niches-inside-niches. There are more cars than ever available at this $50k price point – because that’s where the business is. Funky financing arrangements and artificially low interest rates make money go further than ever, enticing customers into more expensive cars than they would otherwise choose.
There’s also the thorny issue of what is known in marketing as ‘the value proposition.’ The idea in consumers’ minds that a certain product should cost a specific amount – whether this figure is arrived at arbitrarily, a long-standing price promotion, or an unreliable memory of what things used to cost. I see gamers complaining about the price of AAA titles now costing $60 – while forgetting or not knowing that back in the early nineties Super Nintendo cartridges cost $59.99 and sometimes more, which now works out to $136. Adjusted for inflation, a Miata costs less today than it did at launch in 1990, and you’re getting a modern car that won’t turn you into a pork milkshake when you get side-swiped by a semi. So while the perception is cars cost a lot more today, the reality is wages haven’t kept pace, making everything feel more expensive.
We can play the inflation game all afternoon, and I’ve got a whole article to pad out so let’s do that. From the shelves of my wood paneled library I have next to me a selection of old American and British car magazines. In the dusky pages of the May 1969 issue of Car And Driver is a price list for all cars available that year. The cheapest domestic car is the AMC Rambler two door sedan at $1,998 ($17,294 in 2025), with a little symbol next to it denoting you will be suffering the indignity of a six cylinder engine. The cheapest imported car is the Austin America, yours for $1,765 ($15,277), which was probably deliberately priced to undercut the Beetle 1500 at $1,799 ($15,571).
Close enough together, but all three cars approached low purchase price motoring in different ways. The Rambler was a three-quarter scale traditional American sedan in its final year of production. The Austin America was a federalized version of the billion-selling BMLC ADO16, an advanced hydraulically suspended Pininfarina design – its lower cost was helped by pound sterling cratering in 1967. The Beetle was an anachronism turned into an anti-establishment icon by counterculture acceptance and a groundbreaking advertising campaign that was cheap because it had been on sale for donkey’s years. Europeans designed and engineered small cars for themselves that coincidentally could be sold in America for the parsimonious. Detroit took the big cars they knew, gutted the joy out of them and turned the shrink ray on them to make them cheaper.
Moving through the decades, because you’re a penny pinching masochist in 1974 handing your local British Leyland importer $2,949 ($19k in 2025) would put a set of Marina keys in your hand and all its oil on your driveway. Strike loving British line workers and their American cousins around this time built cars by lovingly smashing them together, but by the early eighties the fastidious Japanese had turned up. In 1982, a check for $5,695 ($19k) bought you a Mazda GLC Custom with a four speed plus overdrive gearbox. Remember that 1990 Euro Escort Popular I drove a couple of years back? That came with a four-speed box and no cassette player yet still retailed for the equivalent of £19k.
How To Build A Cheap Car
Before we start discussing how clever design can make cars cheaper to buy, it’s important to understand the role they played for manufacturers. Cars that are cheap to buy and run were traditionally seen by OEMs as necessary to retain (or gain) market share at lower price points and to give customers an entry point into the range, something which customers respond to less in the modern era. Thanks to the internet, they have much more information available and more ways to buy cars – no longer are you restricted to what the local dealer has in stock, and brand loyalty can’t be taken for granted.
Small cars did not always earn money. The legend goes that when the Mini appeared in 1959, Ford couldn’t believe BMC were making any money on the little car. After pulling one apart, costing it, and concluding BMC weren’t, Ford went and designed the Cortina. Likewise, the Renault 4 with its odd semi-monocoque construction was labor intensive to build and took years to make a profit.
According to the book “Let’s Call It Fiesta” Ford spent billions of dollars in the seventies designing and developing the Fiesta solely because they predicted to lose market share in Europe, which was already turning towards low cost transverse engine hatchbacks. When the initial design studies were carried out, the Detroit proposal for a super cheap Ford was to shorten the European RWD Escort – because hacking up a bigger car was the only way America knew how to do it. It didn’t provide the necessary savings to allow the car to be sold at a lower price than the Escort and the packaging was horrible. Ford did not have the experience of a company like Fiat, for whom cheap cars were their bread and butter.
When Fiat wanted to replace the original 500, they commissioned Italian design legend Giugiaro to produce something that was not only cheap to buy, but crucially cheap to build. The Panda ended up with flat panels, flat glass that was symmetrical side to side, and a minimal interior. As functional a piece of car design as there has ever been, the industrial beauty of these little boxes makes me weep – but such a spartan car would be a hard sell in 2025. The way to do it these days is shown by the current 500 – boutique appeal, a £17k ($22k) starting price, and sell the same car for 17 years with only modest updates as necessary.
Closer to the present day, the Ford (again) Maverick hit the showrooms with a headline $20k starting price. Possibly because Ford underpriced it, the first year of production was sporadic and there are currently no 2024 Mavericks listed at less than $26k. This represents another reason for making a cheap car – lure customers into the showroom with a low starting price and then upsell them to a higher spec model. As a marketing strategy, this comes unglued when the super cheap version is what people want to buy, as Ford found out. The exact opposite happened in the UK when Dacia landed the bare-bones Duster crossover. It came in appliance white, had steel wheels and unpainted bumpers, windy windows and a startling price of £8,995 (£14k in 2025). They sold about three and these ‘Access’ trim levels were soon withdrawn. If nothing else, this highlights the difference between American customers who tend to fixate on price and European customers who tend to focus on image and features.
I’ve just been on the Chevrolet website and adding alloy wheels to a base model 2025 Trax (because style doesn’t take a day off even if I’m poor) comes to $22,790. It has electric windows all round, wireless phone CarPlay/Android Auto, single zone climate, cloth seats with a 60/40 split rear, USB ports, steering wheel controls, tinted glass, power mirrors and automatic headlights. I can even get a black one without paying extra. It’s even decent to drive. This is a ridiculous bargain and there would be nothing to be saved by stripping these features out. Customers simply wouldn’t buy the car. I appreciate there is an inflation adjusted price delta between 1969 and 2025 of seven or so thousand dollars, but you are getting so much more for your money. Nonetheless, the argument persists that cars have too much stuff in them, and that somehow by yanking out a few hundred dollars worth of electronic parts will magically knock thousands of dollars off the list price of a new car.
There are a lot of complex factors to account for when calculating how much it costs to build a car, but you are dealing with two things. Fixed costs that don’t change whether you sell one car or a million: R&D, operational expenses (keeping the lights on), marketing (advertising costs the same no matter how many cars you sell) and so on. Then there are variable costs: the Bill of Materials (the cost of all the parts that make up the car), labor (how much is needed for a particular vehicle), and things like shipping that increase the more you sell. This is all a gross simplification that ignores the impact of things like currency fluctuations between markets, and I’m sure one of our lovely readers who knows more than me will chime in in the comments, but you get the basic idea. You need a doctorate from the Institute of Moneyology to fully understand the economics of building cars and it’s all closely guarded confidential business information. I know roughly what the BoM is for an L663 Defender, but you couldn’t waterboard that information out of me because I want to see the inside of an OEM design studio again at some point. But I can say another car I was working on with an early six-figure starting price lost its automatically retracting rear spoiler because a competitor vehicle removed theirs. Even at that level, cars are still ruthlessly costed. The thing to bear in mind is at the bottom the margins are thin to non-existent: as the CEO of Autopian Motors you are hopefully making it up on volume or by upselling to more profitable trim levels. Although none of this applies to an exotic OEM like Ferrari, which remains the most profitable per unit car company on the planet.
How Good Design Can Help Keep Costs Down
So to make a car where a lower purchase price is part of the design brief, how can humble car designers influence the outcome? The design process comes under the fixed costs part of the equation: the OEM already has the studio, the equipment, and the staff all bought and paid for – but there is still opportunity cost to consider. Could the design team be working on something more profitable instead? Back in the eighties, even Ford only had enough design and development resources to design and build either one of a mid-engined supercar or a rugged off-road family car notionally categorized as a ‘sport utility vehicle’ – what would become the Explorer.
The main thing to try and do is sketch something simple. This has two outcomes; fewer trim parts means less tooling costs and fewer different materials needed. The Dacia Sandero I reviewed used the same grain of plastic for all the main interior parts. Secondly, simpler parts are quicker and easier to model digitally, meaning less revisions for production feasibility and quicker sign off for release to suppliers. Crucially simpler parts are cheaper to make – easier to stamp or pop out of the molding machine. The more steps and processes you need to produce a part, the more expensive it becomes.
Let’s have a closer look at Ford’s bargain baby. Feature lines are added to panels to stop them drumming and help the metal hold its shape when stamped. On the Maverick bodywork they are kept to a minimum–there are hardly any extraneous feature lines making these panels easier and cheaper to tool up for At the front, there appear to be a total of only nine parts: two headlights, the grille, the crossbar, the Ford badge, the bumper, the lower bumper and two orange marker lights. All the shapes are straightforward, unfussy and uncomplicated. There’s no molding on the bodyside, just a simple plastic cladding piece on the rocker. If you can find one, boggo twenty three grand Mavericks come with steel wheels, but moving up to the XLT gets you alloys. The wheel design itself is chunky with lots of material in the area where the spokes meet the rim. This means they are easier to forge because there are no intricate spoke patterns to test the pattern maker’s sanity, and such a simple design wouldn’t have required rounds of tedious remodeling because it kept failing Finite Element Analysis testing.
You can see this fewer, simpler parts approach in the original 2010 Duster. This car was built on Renault’s B platform from 2002, so it’s a pretty good bet that was well paid off. What I want to use this car to illustrate is how the doors are full height stampings that go all the way up to the cant rail. This massively simplifies the bodyside stamping and cleverly makes the leading edge of the front door the cap of the A pillar, saving additional parts. The car pictured is the only image of the 2010 model still on the Dacia media pages and this is definitely not the £8,995 version – but note the lack of black trim on the B pillar and where the side mirror mounts to the door. This probably saved a dollar on each car, but when you sell 2.3 million worldwide in nine years, it soon adds up.
And that highlights the final piece of the building cars at lower cost puzzle. Ford gets away with not exporting the Maverick because the North American market is big enough to sustain the necessary volumes without the additional expense of making it EuroNCAP compliant and engineering right hand drive versions. The current base model Dacia Duster (which comes with steel wheels again now they are fashionable) starts at £18,850 ($24,357) on the road, including taxes is built in Romania, Brazil, Colombia, Russia and Nigeria – all low labor cost countries.
So yes, with some clever design thinking, leveraging of your global footprint, using common platforms and as many existing components as possible, you can build a car with an advertised price near $20k, although spending just a few thousand more will give you a lot more options. But $15k isn’t realistically possible because cars have not been that cheap for nigh on fifty years. Sorry Torch.
Top graphic images: Ford; Dacia; RK Motors
- The Surprisingly Nice 2024 Chevrolet Trax Is $21,495 Of Fundamental Goodness
- Nissan May Be Having Problems But You Better Respect How They Never Gave Up On Cheap Cars
- The 2025 Nissan Kicks Is A Cheap Car In A Great Suit
- The Cheapest Cool Car You Can Buy Might Be This $26,125 Mini Cooper
Well the Maverick is also the best looking American pickup by far. I wish there was a non-truck that was designed like the Maverick. All the details like indentations in the bed for 2x4s are nice too
Of course the new Toyota Hilux Champ would be even better more attractive if Toyota would sell it here.
Staying in the realm of American style pickup “trucks” , for 40 years the recipe for a cheap vehicle in the United States is a 1940s era frame and suspension with a cheap truck body and pick up bed. Don’t bother with the safety or emissions regulations because it is a “truck“ and hide behind the chicken tax. Once you have the cheapest possible platform, trowel on a bunch of high margin “features” that seem to exist primarily to fall apart or look dated as soon as possible.
If I needed a new truck, the Maverick would be the the obvious choice.
It might be a little more expensive than what is mentioned here, but I think the Chevy Trax is a damned good looking “cheap” car. I just wish it got better mileage. It gets abut 10mpg less than one would expect looking at its size and powertrain.
For 30MPG combined, I would expect it to be AWD and a Crosstrek competitor.
Cheap cars are generally the least expensive combinations of parts needed for cars with better margins. As such, you get what you get. The other big impact of what cheap cars are available is based on which automakers can’t fill the capacity they have already paid for with more profitable models/packages.
Car makers don’t care explicitly about the number of cars they sell; they would rather sell one fully loaded car than a handful of stripper models. The same goes for dealers. All of the incentives for car makers lead to loaded/luxury models.
The price of now vs. “back in the day” is a complicated one. Technology has led to vast improvements in a car’s capabilities at any given price. But there is no doubt that the advancements in technology (not just in the car but in the design, engineering and production) could have been used to make a much less expensive car with capabilities aligned with those of “back in the day.”
But, again, car makers have zero incentive to sell a product for less. They will only do it under extreme duress. When all other options have been exhausted and the only customers available are the ones that nobody else wants. For corporations, the only thing poor people are good for is keeping the labor market depressed and wages low.
Can’t wait to spec out my 2025 Yugo GVX with those factory 20″ mag alloys. Gonna need to also option that rear window defroster to help keep my hands warm when I have to push it in the winter.
Also, I can’t see how it wouldn’t be cheaper for a manufacturer to just have physically fewer options.
I understand halogen headlights are cheaper as a part. But two different production lines, along with the whole supply chain and stocking of those parts? Would it not be cost-comparable overall to just have ONE set of headlights for the model?
It might be, but if LEDs are considered enough of a perk that buyers will step up a trim level or two to get them, it might still be worth eating the higher manufacturing cost in order to sell more Platinums.
I hate that you’re correct on that. Especially when the margins are already fat enough on trucks, they could give us a few more standard features, especially when they’re safety related.
I installed, at great expense, Morimoto XB headlights in my ’18 F150 cause you couldn’t see SHIT at night with the halogens.
Which was a problem, as I worked night shift, so I was driving almost exclusively at night. 12/10 would get those headlights again. Could see way better, and the improved beam pattern saw fewer people flashing me with their brights.
Trucks are the moneymakers because the buyer group is the most willing to overspend, especially on options and trim packages. It is a high-volume market in which buyers are most likely to feel their identities are based on what they drive. As always, this doesn’t mean this is true of every single person buying a truck, but it is true enough for every car maker to act on it.
45 years ago, British Leyland did something just like you mentioned. When the Austin Metro was designed, it had very modern (at the time) flush-lensed headlamps with integrated parking lamps and turn signals. The management decided these were very upscale for such a small car, so there should be a lower-line headlamp design for the lower trim levels. The decision made was to fit the lower trim levels with the sealed-beam headlamp carried over from the Allegro, but this necessitated the fitment of a bezel around the headlamp and a separate turn-signal/parking lamp unit in the bumper, plus extra wiring to the bumper unit. The cost of the low-trim headlamp was less than the high-trim headlamp, but once the cost of the bezel, extra wiring and separate bumper-mounted unit were included the total cost of the low-trim system was more than for the high-trim system. This was considered acceptable, because the flush headlamps were a reason for customers to choose the high-trim versions.
However, by the time of the 1984 facelift the market position of the different versions was well established, and the “L” trim, which had the low-trim headlamps, was by far the biggest seller. The facelift brought a redesigned high-trim headlamp unit, and a redesigned bezel for the low-trim headlamp, but importantly the big-selling “L” trim was fitted with the cheaper high-trim headlamp system, which looked like a spec improvement to repeat “L” buyers, but was actually a cost saving for the manufacturer.
The design superficially resembles a sealed-beam unit but is instead a lens housing that takes a UK-standard LLB410 bulb.
I learned this the hard way back when I owned an MG Metro and purchased a set of replacement headlamp assemblies sight-unseen from the UK that were designed for right-hand traffic. What arrived were the downmarket Austin units whereas my MG had the flush assemblies. I set them aside on a shelf only to discover to my delight a few years later that they were indeed correct for the Austin Allegro I had just purchased, as its headlights also needed to be converted for right-hand traffic.
It is, of course, and that’s why you’ll get things like cars that have most of the equipment for something – say, cruise control, because I remember models where you just had to buy a single aftermarket piece and it worked perfectly – but it’s just disconnected.
It blows my goddamn mind that Ford locks heated seats behind a specific minimum trim level.
I’m in Canada, EVERYTHING comes with heated seats. They’re standard now, with optional or standard heated wheel.
Like, heated seats were standard in the Civic Si up here when they weren’t even AVAILABLE in the states.
Now you’re gonna tell me I can’t spec heated seats in a 60k F150 “STX” trim, with ANY option package? I have to step up another 6K to the XLT and THEN 3k more for the 302A package? That’s fuckin’ insanity.
I would say it’s probably next in line behind power windows and cruise control, for luxuries that are de facto mandatory in Canada
It’s funny how some manufacturers approach this. I’m used to the Toyota approach (I’m not sure if this applied to all models, but has been pretty consistently applied to cheaper models for a while) of a “cold weather package” that adds heated seats and then, depending on the car, things like a heated steering wheel or heat strips to de-ice your wipers.
When I go and spec a car online and I need to go up a trim level (which includes shit like a bigger screen and a moonroof and other things that make it a $3000 price bump) to get heated seats, it basically takes that car out of the running as an option.
My wife doesn’t care about 30 way adjustable seats, she won’t use the sunroof, and the bigger wheels are going to have a rougher ride and more expensive tires. I literally need it to have heated seats and rubber floor mats.
That’s it. I’m in the market for a truck. I want heated seats as a bare minimum, which puts both the F150 and Ranger out of my price range.
Nissan gets it, heated seats and wheel in every trim above the absolute base work truck spec.
That’s pickup truck pricing. It’s almost 1960s-era in thinking.
They’re probably the last type of vehicle where there’s enough desirable options to really jack up prices. Want 4X4 over rear-drive? Multiple engine choices? Regular cab, extended cab, or crew cab? They’re very customizable to a degree almost unheard of for most vehicles today.
So yeah, put the seat heaters in an optional package, because people are already paying for the crew cab and 4X4 options. What’s another $1,500?
Then go knock $5k off the price via incentives, because that’s how Detroit rolls. It’s not very transparent with the bait-and-switch, but the type of buyer matters.
Someone who is aiming for a Civic probably is more likely to just want a practical vehicle at a decent price. Might as well have the base one be reasonably equipped and make the price ‘all-in’, maybe with one or two trim upgraded models for slightly fancier buyers. Simplifies the ordering process for dealers, simplifies the process for the buyer, and simplifies production at the assembly line level.
I just wanna tow my busted-ass project cars around with a warm butt.
So annoying. I will give Ford credit for offering the rear locker as a standalone option, as well as not making you move up trim levels to get a low range transfer case (I’m looking at YOU, GM).
Another funny thing is that when I’m looking at F150 listings the XL’s and STX’s tend to look the best, with the simpler grilles, monochromatic paint, and cleaner wheel designs. Same with the low-end GM trucks, the Chevy “Custom” and GM “Elevation” trims look great with blacked out trim, wheels, and monochromatic paint.
Heated seats are a must, so the XLT is where I’m starting to look, and one top of that it needs to have the sport appearance package, to get rid of the chrome, and like you said, the 302A pkg.
As much as I understand why packages are done as they are – if you’re building 5 possible models it’s way cheaper than buying 25 – I really wish you could spec wheels different from the model again.
It’s the Maverick that makes me think that. The steelies are the best looking wheels on one. This is not up for debate, this is not a question. Maverick on steelies is the business. But back when I looked at one, the only way to get a Maverick with the equipment I liked meant having to go with the model with the much less attractive alloy wheels.
Everyone I talked to, including the dealer, wished they could get an XLT on steelies, it just looked so much better. But you’re stuck with the alloys.
Wheels are at least relatively easy to change if you really care.
Other items buried in packages can be much more annoying.
Like heated seats.
I’M LOOKING AT YOU, FORD.
If it makes you feel better about it, Ford’s heated seats really suck in their trucks. At least mine do.
I had no issues in my XLT. But cloth heats faster.
It’s not the speed but the absolute temp.
I’ve been in cars that will cook you if you don’t shut the seat off, even in subzero temps.
My truck is more like a vaguely warm sensation, even if you let it run for an hour. Dealer has tested it and said its normal.
Yeah, I’ll say the same there. Nothing will compare to my ’93 Audi.
They were the ones that had a scroll dial, and VAG had some lawsuits over heaters burning people.
But my god, those seats were glorious in their heating ability. Combined with the incredible lumbar support, that car was like a mobile Chiropractor.
There are a few I’ve seen where it’s “you want a heated wheel? Hope you like a sunroof and some slightly irritating safety features!” Some companies are experts at putting the one feature you want in the middle of a $5,000 package.
But if you design a car that looks best on steelies, let me have them on the nice one.
Buy the XLT -> swap the alloys for steelies -> sell the alloys.
The dealer wouldn’t swap them out?
In that case, the dealer had no spares. This was way back when it was new, so maybe they have spares now, but at the time it wasn’t possible because they plain didn’t have the wheels to do it.
The payoff of R&D is a point that makes sense for some vehicles like the new Charger Daytona.
The thing is massively overpriced but it makes sense it’s a all new platform and propulsion system for the manufacturer, and they have to make that cost back somehow.
A lot of the other EV makers were able to hide this cost in a high end premium luxury car, while Dodge doesn’t have that option.
The next gen on the same platform will be where the benefits are reaped.
They could have made a more premium Chrysler version, but they may have crunched the numbers and determined it wouldn’t sell enough to be worth the further cost.
In that aspect the previous LX platform was well amortized. On top of being based on older Mercedes parts, it lasted for 18 years among 4 different nameplates of varying price and purpose.
It’s hard for some people to accept that vehicles with so many base features are today’s equivalent of an economy car, especially if they’re a small crossover.
But take a look at manufacturers that still offer a small sedan alongside a small crossover and notice that the price difference is getting ever smaller. It’s getting difficult to justify having both. Some opt to have one vehicle that splits the difference, like the Chevy Trax.
Just about the only new vehicle options that go for less than $20k are the Mitsubishi Mirage and Nissan Versa. Both are being discontinued. Both are also common examples listed in last week’s article asking about worst rental car experiences.
Well said, Adrian.
I have to add one item to your list, and that’s fit and finish. Even cheap panels look better when shutlines are small and consistent and trim pieces are even and well-attached.
Cheapness is also a perceptual thing. Why, for example, did 70s and 80s GM interiors look so awful when the cabin of my Renault 5 seemed, if not luxurious, at least well done? Color choices and plastic textures, I’d say.
I had a 1978 Ford LTDII coupe at 16. Every single interior panel was a slightly different shade/sheen/texture of burgundy. And yes, panel gaps you could throw a cat through.
So true.
My mother had a Mercury Comet — supposedly an “upscale” Ford Maverick with the interior swathed in horrific red (probably the same shade as your LTD) plastic and cloth. When new, the color of the various materials almost matched, but in time the mismatch became grotesque.
Priorities? GM didn’t give a shit, Renault did?
Thank you for saying this, it seems to be a common belief in the comments, and even the staff is sometimes guilty of hinting at it or implying it when they discuss modern cars and their pricing.
The touchscreen or the blind spot monitoring is not what’s making new cars expensive.
This, and the addition of overall “option packages” or “equipment groups” directly impact the bottom line production costs. Modern electronics are cheap and there is more to gain as a manufacturer in minimizing production variability. It is why “all” Model T’s are black (I know there were actually color options early in the run).
ORMs know what options customers are likely to choose together – if they want heated seats they will probably want heated mirrors for instance, so this is why these features are packaged together. And line complexity as well – which is why you will never be able to have options a la carte.
Exactly. I think a lot of people try to justify their bias against touchscreens / modern car tech by claiming it’s too expensive. However, touchscreens and controller boards are far cheaper than having different injection mold tooling for different control panel layouts. As someone who works in the automotive injection molding realm, it’s cheaper to change control “buttons” in software than having blank “poverty buttons”.
Applies everywhere, too. What costs more, a new TV or getting your fence replaced?
I do wonder if the abandonment of the loss-leader segment was the real kicker after the pandemic disruption.
For decades, the loss leader was a Detroit thing. They would churn out thousands of mediocre sedans and flush them onto roads via deals and rental companies. At best, they broke even on it, at worst, it cost them thousands of dollars per unit in the hope of luring in buyers who would buy up the chain.
Then Detroit got wise and pulled way back on small and midsize sedans. Stopped discounting hugely unless it was a pickup truck with fat margins. Would terminate production rather than eat losses.
Even the Japanese got wise and culled their low-margin cars. Base 5-speed Corollas with no A/C? Gone. Add $3k to the base price and just sell something the people want to buy instead of a dust-collector on a dealer lot.
Which makes the inflated prices look less bad today. Base models are pretty well-equipped now, whereas base models before were undesirable and people probably paid more in options.
I think this has a lot of truth to it.
People remember flashy ads with low base prices from bygone years, but how many of those models were actually sold?
That photo of the brown Duster is breaking my brain. The way the front of the door shut line goes right through the trim panel in front of the mirror looks really hokey.
Adrian, do you see what I’m seeing?
You are correct the shutlines are a bit wonky. That leading edge of the front door is bad – the facelift had a trim piece which mitigated it somewhat.
I remember about 20 years ago pricing out Dodge Chrysler minivans versus Honda minivans and if my memory serves me, the Chrysler minivans had three motors and two transmissions, and the Honda had one each. There were all these different models and makes and trim levels of the Chrysler minivans and Honda you had like two and one without navigation and one with and that was about it. There has to be some cost savings only having one engine and transmission versus six combinations is that true?
It’s a complicated analysis.
If the non-recurring costs (development) of the optional drivetrains are reasonable, and the recurring cost (manufacturing) of the different variants is about the same, then:
If you have a high volume seller of a product, your margin on the options is higher than the baseline (typical) and the options sell well, you’ll make money on the endeavor.
NRC vs. RC and how you pay for the NRC (absorb the NRC all at once, or spread it out per unit?) is a quite the challenge.
In my perfect utopian company, I would have an annual budget for development so that you don’t need to penalize the cost of lower volume products.
But, my utopia doesn’t exist because of shareholders.
You just need a few hundred billion dollars to start your own company and keep it privately owned!
I mean, Ford did tell us that all one had to do is look at a Granada and a Mercedes to find proof that good design can make a cheap car look less cheap.
Hey, Mercedes did their best, okay?
I always thought those ads were hokey (having come into awareness of them looking through old mags as a kid about 10 years after they ran) because, especially for the prefacelift model, everything about the Granada’s design and detailing screamed Ford almost as loudly as the firstgen Seville (which they also compared it to)’s styling cues were so very, very GM especially after they’d been recycling them on everything else for a decade.
For me, there is another part of the equation in the search for a high volume, low cost car design, and that’s a rev happy engine package. I don’t care how behind the curve the power train design is, this type of vehicle needs the heart of a Fiat.
I’ve had a few Morris Minor over the years. Nice little cars but overshadowed by the VW Beetle. The VW had character. The Morris looked like a shrunken 1949 Plymouth.
But both pretty rugged and easy to keep running for a very long time as long as they were kept away from salt
Another reason that isn’t mentioned very often, used cars exist. Why buy a new cheap shitbox for $15k when there are used cars which are much nicer for the price, or the same shitienes for much cheaper. I’d wager 8/10 times a used option takes the prize.
But the article is about new cars and if nobody buys new cars we may run out of used cars. There are people that want cheap new cars for reliability, warranty, and they have not the skills, location, tools or time for repairs and do not want big used cars. They can have automotive journalism for them every so often also. We should not crap on what they want and mock them into doing what we think is best for them.
?
Exactly, not everyone wants to wrench on their car all the time. I understand lots of us are fine with that, but to pretend that there is not a crowd who wants/needs a cheap new car is foolish. Additionally, the lack of cheap of new cars has caused used cars to continue being expensive. And as evidenced by the Honda Fit, Mazda 3 and several others, just because it is cheap new, does not mean boring or compromised to drive.
I mean I got my brand new 2025 Nissan Leaf S (40kWH) for $21,449.59. It is the “shitbox” of the BEV world and it’s great so far. Comes with a combo portable 120v/240v charger, has plenty of pep in its step, ride is soft but planted. How it ages both via miles on the odometer and in years will tell how good the value is, but I’m very happy with it so far, and that’s on the stock tires. I’m having Michelin Cross Climate 2’s put on right now.
If Nissan can do that with a 4 door I think someone can make a smaller low range BEV for even less, and that’s with current battery tech. Designs like the new Citroen Ami show how one can save costs and still be great.
Warranty. Financing options. Lack of knowledge.
“Cars are a visible manifestation of our personality; nobody wants to look stingy, even if they are”
Ahem!
Dammit, didn’t realize a Duster was so expensive in Brazil (starts from 21.500 euros aprox). Maybe our labor is not so cheap.
Reminds me the time I used to work for an american company, me and a couple of colleagues were discussing a client project, and the american director enters the room and asks what we are doing.
After we explained, he said it was good work, better yet because we cost half of what an american would cost, but to not get so confortable because an argentinean would cost half of what we do, and left the room.
It took as half a minute to realize it was his motivational speech.
Good times.
Kinda makes you wonder why they didn’t just build the factory in Argentina in the first place.
Because of legal uncertainty, extremely powerfull and expensive trade union laws that raise the labor cost without increasing salaries, heavy taxation, erratic exchange rate policies, burdens to send profit to headquarters, cronic economic turmoil, and decaying public education (which made Toyota Argentina’s CEO complain about the dificulty of hiring new employees for well-paid jobs). We’ve been losing our automotive industry at an alarming rate for the last couple decades.
Just the usual South American problems (or the two biggest south american economies usual problems). From your perspective, how is Milei doing? It is impossible to to find something to read in press without some partiality.
That would be like trying to find US sources that have no opinions on Trump (either way). Without getting into specifics I can guarantee that the people who don’t share your opinions have opinions of their own.
Which somehow wasn’t mentioned in that director’s Dread Pirate Roberts styled keep working your ass off because there’s always a strawman even cheaper than you “motivational” speech.
Fuck that guy!
I saw Starship Troopers, and so I was excited to read it.
In the opening chapter, the main character is in some kind of battle suit, literally jumping over a city and throwing explosives at civilians.
I was like, huh, that’s different; in the movie one main point is that the soldiers are poorly equipped and un-armored and basically in a meat grinder.
As I kept reading, I realized it was good that the main character was killing civilians (in the book’s point of view) because it wasn’t a satire.
The book didn’t intend to be satire as much as the film claims to, it was more of a thought experiment like many of Heinlein’s books. If you’re looking for examples of fascism, militarism, libertarianism, theologism, socialism, all the isms, he’s probably got a book for that.
I read the book before the movie came out and like you immediately noticed the difference. The book goes into great detail about the powered suits they wear and all of the automation and armaments and displays and then the movie comes out and they’re just running around in football and dirtbike pads. I’m guessing they spent all their budget on the bugs but it made me wish they’d waited another decade or two before making that movie until the IronMan levels of special effects were available.
I’ve read almost all of Heinlein’s work over the years. Starship Troopers is an odd one and definitely a “what if” thought experiment. His next major book was Stranger In A Strange Land, then The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress. It would be difficult to find 3 more divergent works by the same author over an 8 year period!
Heinlein also arguably foresaw the US response to Vietnam almost a decade early.
Stranger and Moon were two of my favorite books growing up but ironically the older I get the more I enjoy his juveniles. For Us, the Living is another great example and made me think more about universal basic income.
I think most of his books were attempts to warn about the future by taking scenarios to their extremes, even to the point of being ridiculous. He’s stated that Podkayne was just such an attempt.
For Us, The Living foreshadowed his entire literary career. The seeds of most of his later work all there in this (unpublished) first novel.
He was very liberal in his youth, became more conservative after marrying Virginia. Troopers was written around that time.
I’m re-re-re-re-re-re(just a LOT of “re’s”) reading Moon now. Stranger and Moon are an amazing one-two punch of novels. I still love “Friday” despite some, umm, problematic content. Its setting of a Balkanized United States is starting to feel pretty prescient.
A lot of his work is problematic in the modern era. He also may have understood the human animal better than most contemporaries.
Absolutely. If you compare his characters, warts and all, to Asimov or even Niven there’s an enormous difference. Mannie, Jubal or Friday are fully-realized characters instead of archetypes. Unfortunately a lot of his later work got characterized (sometimes fairly) as his “Dirty Old Man” era.
Asimov never really understood people – he freely admitted it.
Asimov was also was a terrible predictor of technology advancements. IIRC he had computers they size of planets and navigators making hyperjumps calculations on slide rulers.
To be fair he was a graduate student when he wrote those books. I first read them in high school I though his writing quaint then again as a graduate student myself and yeah, the second time around it was very clear to me where he was in his life at that time.
Asimov was at heart an optimistic humanist and philosopher. Heinlein was an engineer.
I read all the Robot stories and Foundation series at around 13. The tech is hopelessly anachronistic but the message rings clear.
Did I mention those planet sized computers were based on vacuum tubes?
Hey, the transistor was still 15? years from common use. The Robot stories were written primarily pre-WW2 and Foundation during the early ’50s. He was a bio-chemist, not a technologist.
As I said his being a graduate student at the time he wrote those books s very apparent.
Sixth Column and Farnham’s Freehold are the two always held out as not having aged well but looking at the major world events at the time they were written you can see how Heinlein got there. Sixth I don’t bother rereading much but I do reread Farnham’s from time to time. Honestly the racism in that book doesn’t bother me nearly as much as how he treats his wife.
This is a great article.
I like the MGs and Triumphs of the 1960s because they pulled off the “cheap car looking expensive” idea very well. A least the cars looked more expensive than they actually were, cheap being relative.
The old Euro Ford trick of stylish bodies (Pininfarina and Michelotti in the case of MG and Triumph) on agricultural mechanicals.
Were the Pre-C2 Corvettes any different? Sometimes just looking good is enough.
Because of their design, they actually performed better than the average car for their time period using those agricultural mechanicals. Lightweight and relatively low drag with appropriate suspension is what gave the MG/Triumph sports cars the edge over much of the competition costing 3-10x as much or more.
The humble Triumph TR3 was one of the fastest cars available in the USA when it was new. Its sub-11-second 0-60 mph acceleration time and 110 mph top speed put it close to a Ferrari 166MM Barchetta, Chevrolet Corvette C1, Jaguar XK120, Buick Century, Lotus Elite, Aston Martin DB2, Cadillac Series 62, Chrysler 300A, and Oldsmobile 88, AND it remained relatively inexpensive compared to the average new car sold in the US at the time.
We can and should have an entry-level, beautiful-looking car TODAY that can compete in performance with the supercars of our time, especially with the capabilities of modern EV technology. By necessity, it will be a small, lightweight, low frontal area, low drag, de-teched design with minimal bells and whistles, getting long range with a small but power-dense battery powering a motor used in EVs weighing 2.5x as much or more. The availability of such a thing could shift and disrupt the market by providing a niche that hasn’t existed for an entire lifetime: the affordable supercar. The Chinese auto industry is already showing this is possible, without actually building the car I’m describing, by demonstrating that all of the bits and pieces needed are there across lineups of many vehicles.
I think potential for such a thing, Lotus-11 sized or smaller, under 2,000 lbs, using around 130 Wh/mile to cruise 70 mph, with 400+ horsepower driving the rear wheels, is there for under $20,000 IF enough can be produced in volume and also sold.
The humble Triumph TR3 was one of the fastest cars available in the USA when it was new. Its sub-11-second 0-60 mph acceleration time put it close to a Ferrari 166MM Barchetta, Chevrolet Corvette C1, Jaguar XK120, Buick Century, Lotus Elite, Aston Martin DB2, Cadillac Series 62, Chrysler 300A, and Oldsmobile 88, AND it remained relatively inexpensive compared to the average new car sold in the US a the time.
It also came with cutting edge tech: Front disc brakes!
That was very common at that time. Lamborghini only started making sports cars because Ferruccio Lamborghini got pissed off Ferrari was using Lamborghini tractor parts in Ferrari’s sports cars and adding a hefty Ferrari tax for them:
“Balboni admits, with a chuckle, that Lamborghini liked to “make a show” but was generally not a very good driver. “He was always burning the clutch,” says Balboni. That meant repeated trips to the nearby Ferrari factory to replace it. After the third or fourth visit, Lamborghini decided to have the clutch replaced at his own tractor company, by his own head mechanic.
After disassembling the Ferrari engine and transmission, Lamborghini’s mechanic discovered that the clutch fitted on the Ferrari was identical to the clutch fitted onto one of Lamborghini’s own small tractors.
“It was a commercial clutch, fitted on Maseratis, Ferraris, and all the sports cars of those days,” Balboni explains. It also happened to be fitted onto a certain type of Lamborghini tractor. This did not sit well with Lamborghini, the disgruntled Ferrari owner.
“Ferruccio Lamborghini . . . he started yelling, he was so mad because he said, ‘I pay for my tractor 10 lire [for this part], and I paid Ferrari 1000 lire for the same part.’ So, one day, when he met Enzo Ferrari, the two started talking. During the discussion, Ferruccio Lamborghini had the bad idea to tell Enzo Ferrari, ‘You build your beautiful cars with my tractor parts.’ ”
https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a25169632/lamborghini-supercars-exist-because-of-a-tractor/
They did, one of my mom’s friends was a plastic surgeon, and he bought a cheap used MGB for his teenage daughters to share, they were both embarrassed to drive it, because kids in school already made fun of them for their dad being a rich doctor, and they thought it looked like a stereotypical rich doctor car. So it became his summer runaround and they got an older Civic of some sort